Page 72 of Tight Spot

Play the role. And maybe see exactly what Marchand had said to me, how much he was buying this shit with Hailey or how necessary he thought it really was.

CHAPTER20

HAILEY

Iwasn’t sure I’d ever spent this much time surrounded by so many children since I stopped volunteering in my church’s preschool when I was in high school. Dawson wasn’t joking when he said that Maggie’s story was a doozy. She filled me in as soon as her oldest sister Ruth walked up, two younger kids with her and then I’d heard another was running around somewhere.

As soon as she told me a brief story, it’d all clicked. Her family had been related to a different one that was on a reality television show. I’d seen it before, but it started giving me the creepy-crawlies after a few episodes. But I did vaguely remember reading one day, probably on a magazine cover at the grocery store checkout, that a bunch of them had been arrested. It hadn’t occurred to me her parents and older brothers were included in that until she got further into the story.

Martha, her youngest, had practically claimed me as soon as she met me. Everywhere I went, she was there, asking me for juice or a snack, and the little girl was so adorable with curls in her waist-length dark-brown hair I couldn’t resist. She skipped when she walked, and those curls happily bounced right along with her.

Maggie had grown more than when I saw her two weeks ago. If she made it to her wedding in two weeks without bursting open at the seams, it’d be a miracle in itself.

“It’s like the world’s largest pumpkin in there.” Eden rubbed her hands all over Maggie’s belly, while the rest of us laughed with Maggie.

“Shut up. Short people problems for sure.” She groaned and when her sister, Joy, spilled carrots all over the ground from holding her plate sideways, made an entirely different kind of groan. “I can’t see my toes, or my ankles, much less pick this off the ground.”

Eden crouched down and gathered them up. “It’s fine. That’s why we’re outside anyway.” She tossed the carrots into the trees. “Squirrels and deer will take care of them, see?”

“Thank you, Eden.” Maggie glanced behind my shoulder. “And I think you’re being summoned by a big grumpy looking guy.”

“What?” There was only big grumpy guy here who knew me, except for me, he wasn’t all that grumpy.

I’d seen it though. In the harsh stance of his shoulders and spine, the furl of his lips downward. As soon as we stepped outside and teammates started talking to Dawson, he’d closed himself off.

Stupid, considering others seemed to like him despite his reserved personality.

As our gazes met, he gestured with a dip of his head to the side for me to come to him. “I’m being beckoned.”

“Might as well crook his finger and growl ‘woman’ like some caveman,” Eden said.

I bumped my hip into hers. “I like those kinds of growls.”

I stepped away from both of them with their laughter following me and a get it, girl, from one of them. My guess, it was Eden. She didn’t seem to have much of a filter. Sort of reminded me of Sloane.

“You rang?” I drawled to Dawson when I reached his side.

“How’s it going?”

“You pulled me away from your friends’ wives to ask how I was doing?”

He scanned the backyard, filled with forty men, half as many wives or girlfriends and dates, and said nothing, but there was a look in his eye. A twitch in his cheek.

I splayed my hand on my chest and gave him a dramatic sigh. “Dawson Butler. Did you miss me?”

He rolled his eyes and took my hand in his. “I have to talk to our new coach. Wanted you with me. Need a fresh drink or anything?”

Ah. So there was a reason he needed me next to him.

He also didn’t deny the missing me part. If I wasn’t mistaken, Dawson was actually starting to like me.

Problem was, I didn’t think he liked it all that much.

* * *

Logan Caldwell was a stud. Dawson had told me he wasn’t sure of him, but I was starting to believe Dawson simply didn’t trust many people. And he didn’t like change. Considering I didn’t know anything about football, I had no idea if Logan would be a good coach or not, but it didn’t take me long at all to believe he was a sincere guy.

It was obvious as soon as he shook my hand, told me it was great to meet me, in a way that made me truly believe.

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